Education

Children in Pre-oprational Stage.

hopefully useful for the reader and can be used as an example to conduct the research in different object of course.

CHAPTER 1

A.       Introduction

Teachers and parents can often judge very well what their children can or cannot yet do or understand. Even though children are all unique learners. They also show some characteristic in common with thir peers. When parents of similar aged children talk together they often realize that their children act similary ina range of situations. For example, parents of five year olds find that their children use similar arguments in conversations or enjoy very similary games, activities, and jokes. Children does not same with adult who can thinking beyond the immediate context in more abstract term. They are able to carry out logical operations such as deductive reasoning in a systemic way. It is called formal oprational stage and for getting the stage, children always past pre-oprational stage to get it. Where the child’s thinking is largely reliant on perception but he or she gradually becomes more and more capable of logical thinking. On the whole this stage is characterized by egocentrism and a lack of logical thinking.

B.       The purposes of observation

1.      To prove the truth of the material with the phenomena which occur in real life.

2.      To discover new knowledge acquired from the target of observation.

3.      To study the characteristics of children in the stage ‘pre-oprational’.

4.      To know the proper way how to communicate with children in this stage of the pr-oprational.

CHAPTER 2

Content Of The Research

1.         The Basic Theory

Piaget’s second stage, preoperational thought, features the flourishing use of mental representations and the beginnings of logic (intuitive thought). Although logic is emerging, it is based only on personal experience (Piaget called it intuitive). Also, as you will see shortly, children still do not recognize that some logical processes can be reversed.

preoperational thought : Thought characterized by the use of mental representations (symbols) and intuitive thought.

■ Flourishing Mental Representations. During the preoperational stage children will practice, and even playfully exaggerate, their new symbolic or mental representation abilities.

Let’s look at the symbols they use in language, artwork, and play.

Symbols in Language. Talk to a child who is just turning 2, and the conversation will

be pretty simple and limited to objects and events currently present. Talk to a 4-year-old,

however, and you’ll find yourself engaged in a real conversation! As we discuss in Chapter 8,

there is an explosive increase in children’s vocabulary and grammar (rules for putting words

together) after the age of about 18 months. At 18 months, the average vocabulary is about 22

words. By 2 years children use more than 250 words on average, and by 5 years their vocabulary is more than 2,000 words (Anglin, 1993).What makes this rapid escalation of linguistic skill possible? According to Piaget, language development is based on children’s mental representational ability—their ability to let a symbol (e.g., a word) stand for an object in the environment. This ability gives children a way to communicate about the objects in the

environment, even when the objects are not actually present. Children’s use of symbols also

allows their thought to become faster and more efficient, because it no longer depends on the

actual physical manipulation of objects in the environment. If a child is upset, for example,

the child can name the problem, thereby increasing the likelihood that a parent or caregiver

can help. The process of construction is also evident in language, as children actively filter

what they hear and create their own inventive versions of words and phrases. A young child may call a blanket a “winkie,” describe a person with short hair as having “little

hair,” or say that a criminal is “under arrested.”

Symbols in Artwork. Preoperational children’s increasing ability to use mental representation is also seen clearly in the artwork they produce. When one of our daughters was 3 years old, she drew a heavy black horizontal line above a bright red horizontal line. “Look, Mom, I made a picture of you!” she said. “See, there’s your head, and your hair on top, and that’s your favorite red shirt!”What parent has not admired their own child’s evidences of mental representation? To produce such artwork, the child must have mental representations—not only of the mother’s face and hair, for example, but also of her favorite red shirt. Though the initial scribbles of 3-year-olds may not resemble any real object to an adult, they are evidence that the child has developed mental representation.

In Figure 1.1 are drawings made by children

of various ages; you can easily trace the development of more accurate and more complex mental representations.

Symbols in Play. Watch children engaged in play, and you will soon see clear evidence of symbol use. In symbolic play children use one object to stand for another, such as

when they pretend that a blanket is a magic carpet or a banana is a telephone. Children of 18 months seldom show such symbolic play; for example, they’ll pretend to talk on a telephone

only when they have in hand a quite realistic-looking toy telephone. By the age of 2, children will use objects far less similar to the real item (such as using a banana for a tele-phone). Finally, by 5 years children are capable of using practically anything as a pretend “telephone.” The ability to form mental representations allows these children to use fantasy and symbolism in their play. Using mental symbols, children can escape the reality of the here and now and pretend to be superheroes on exciting adventures in far-off places. Their ability to mentally represent objects has progressed to the point that the symbol no longer has to bear any resemblance to the real thing (Corrigan, 1987; O’Reilly, 1995).

Preoperational children also use symbols in fantasy play, in which they pretend to be

something they are not (like a tiger or a superhero) or to engage in activities that are impossible (like having their teddy bear read them a story). And in make-believe play children use toys as props to carry out some procedure, such as using a kitchen set and dishes to pretend to cook dinner, or using a doll to pretend to feed and rock a baby. All these kinds of play require that the child be able to allow one thing to represent another. For Piaget, these types of play indicate children’s degree of mental representation. It also allows them to practice and become more skillful in mental representation.

■ Emergence of Intuitive Thought:“It Seems That. . . .” Another important development

during the preoperational stage is the emergence of intuitive thought, or reasoning

based on personal experience rather than on any formal logical system. Children reason according to what things “seem like,” according to their personal experience with the objects and events involved. For example, on the way to preschool one foggy morning, our son, who was about 3½ years old, said, “Better turn your lights on—it’s really froggy out.”When asked what he meant, he explained that he had noticed a lot of this cloudy stuff in the air whenever we drove by ponds. “I know that frogs live in water, so when all the frogs breathe out, they make the air froggy.” An admirable attempt, to be sure, but our son’s intuitive explanation would not pass the objective tests of true logic. Evidence of intuitive thought can be seen in several characteristics of thinking that are common during the preoperational period, including egocentrism, animism, and artificialism.

Piaget used the term egocentrism to refer to the young child’s inability to take another

person’s perspective. To young children it does seem that they are the center of the universe, and it seems that everyone must think about things just the way they do. Preoperational children are not able to understand that other people’s perspectives might be different from

their own. The classic demonstration of egocentrism is the three-mountain task. As pictured

in Figure 1.2, experimenters show children a model of three mountains that have landmarks placed among them. A child sits at one location in relation to the mountains, and a doll sits at another location. The experimenter then asks the child to describe what the doll would see from its location. Preschool children typically describe the scene as they view it from their own location. Further, when given photographs depicting the views from each location around the table, children select the photos showing the view from their own locations, not the doll’s (Piaget & Inhelder, 1948/1956). In other words, children select views based on their own personal and intuitive experience with the scene. They don’t yet take into account the logical necessity that someone viewing the scene from a different place will have a different perspective.

Pigure 1.2

Source: H. Bee & D. Boyd. (2002). Lifespan development, 3rd ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, p. 158.

Animism—the idea that inanimate objects have conscious life and feelings—is typical of the preoperational stage (Piaget, 1929, 1930, 1951). For example, children may say that the sun is shining brightly because it is happy, or they may put their pencil down because “it is tired.” Artificialism is the notion that natural events or objects (e.g., the sun, moon, hurricanes, droughts) are under the control of people or of superhuman agents. A child might say that the sun went down because someone switched it off, or that the moon isn’t shining because someone blew it out. As children’s cognitive structures encounter more and more instances in which animism and artificialism do not satisfactorily explain events, they begin to move away from these modes of intuitive thought and gradually move toward explanations based on physical facts and on a more objective logic.

■ Conservation Problems. The most famous examples of preoperational thought come from children’s answers to Piaget’s conservation problems. Piaget used the term conservation to refer to the concept that certain basic properties of an object (e.g., volume, mass, and weight) remain the same even if its physical appearance changes (Ginsburg & Opper, 1988; Piaget, 1952b, 1969, 1970; Piaget & Inhelder, 1974). For example, look at the liquid conservation problem shown in Figure 5.4. An experimenter fills two identical beakers with liquid to the same level, as shown on the left. The experimenter asks the child, “Do these two have the same amount of liquid, or does one have more?” The child says that they have the same amount. Then, with the child watching, the experimenter pours the contents of one beaker into a taller and skinnier beaker.When asked if the two beakers “have the same amount, or does one have more?” younger children typically claim that the taller beaker has more liquid than the shorter beaker.When asked why, they usually point to the height of the liquid surface: “See, this one is taller, so it has more.” Children using preoperational thought don’t seem to understand that the volume of liquid is conserved (remains the same) even though the shape of the container changes. Children give similar responses for tasks involving number and mess.

Centration in their thinking. Centration is the tendency to focus on only one aspect of a situation at a time instead of taking several aspects into consideration. In the liquid problem, for example, children tend to focus on the height of the liquid, instead of considering that the greater width of one beaker compensates for the taller height of the other. Second, young children focus on the static endpoints of the transformation (how things look before and after) rather than considering what happened in the transformation itself. Children look at the beginning state then at the ending state (one level is higher on the right side), and they conclude that the higher level must have more. They fail to consider the transformation itself—the act of pouring could show that the amount of liquid did not change. And finally, children at this stage lack a grasp of reversibility. That is, they do not imagine what would

happen if they reversed the transformation; they don’t visualize pouring the liquid back into its original container to demonstrate that the amount would still be the same.When children focus on the height of the liquid, pay attention only to the static endpoints of the problem, and don’t imagine pouring the liquid back, you can see why they usually obtain such an intuitive answer as “this one is taller, so it has more.” Piaget saw the lack of mental reversibility as an important hallmark of preoperational thought. To be fully logical, our cognitive structures need to be reversible. Think about the logic of math, for example. If we have 4 and take 2 away, we need to understand that we can return to 4 by adding 2 back. Piaget gave a special name to cognitive structures that are reversible. He called them operations—actions performed mentally that are reversible (Ginsburg & Opper, 1988). Piaget believed that these dynamic mental operations were necessary for true logical thought. This is why he called the second stage preoperational thought—it is thought that is not yet reversible, not yet truly operational. With continued experience with the environment, children realize that their intuitive thought does not adequately explain the events around them. As they realize the reversibility of many transformations and their thought structures become operational, we have the beginnings of the next stage of cognitive development.

Piaget titled the stage following the sensorimotor stage the preoperational stage.  Piaget believed that children in this stage were not capable of understanding certain cognitive schemes labeled operations.

The cognitive schemes/tasks that children at the preoperational stage cannot perform, according to Piaget's theory, follow.

1.      Conservation tasks

The recognition that properties of an object or substance do not change when its appearance is altered in some superficial way.

2.      The 3 - mountain task

A three-dimensional mountain is placed in front of a child.  A house is set on one of the mountains.  Next, the conductor sets "Dolly" at a certain angle, usually opposite the child, and asks the child what view Dolly sees.  Child will respond with the view he/she sees.

3.      Seriation

Understanding less than and more than.  Children in the preoperational stage do not understand; therefore, they cannot arrange objects by sequence.

4.      Class inclusion

Children in the preoperational stage cannot think of an object simultaneously belonging to both a subclass and superordinate class.

5.      Transitive inference

Transitive inference is using logic to find the missing piece.  For example, "a" is greater than "b" and "b" is greater than "c."  Children in the preoperational stage don't understand that "a" is also greater than "c."

The preoperational stage is also characterized by the deficiencies in logical thinking children at this stage display.

1.      Egocentrism

Children in the preoperational stage have trouble viewing the world from a perspective different from their own. The 3-mountain task tests the child's egocentrism

2.      Centration

This is a tendency to focus on a single aspect of a problem rather than looking at the whole picture.

3.      Intuitive

Children at the preoperational stage make choices based on salient features, no logic.

4.      Perceptually-oriented

Children at the preoperational stage have the tendency to focus on the perceptual aspect of a task and not the logical aspect.

5.      Animism

Giving life-like characteristics to inanimate objects.

2. Analyzing of Research

Reisya Sabila is four year old, and she is at Piaget's preoperational stage. According to Piaget's description of the preoperational stage children, they cannot understand his conservation tasks. This preoperational stage, "children can use representations (mental images, drawings, words, gestures) rather than just motor actions to think about objects and events. Thinking now is faster, more flexible and efficient, and more socially shared. Thinking is limited by egocentrism, a focus on perceptual states, reliance on appearances rather than underlying realities, and rigidity (lack of reversibility)" (Flavell, miller, 1993). The young children do not have abilities to have "operations mental actions that obey logical rules. Instead, their thinking is rigid, limited to one aspect of a situation at a time, and strongly influenced by the way things appear at the moment" (Berk, 1999). According to Piagetian conservation tasks, preoperational stage: 2-7 years old children lacked the knowledge to conserve. Conservation means, " the understanding that certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same, even when their outward appearance changes" (Berk, 1999). Piaget's test for conservation of number is described as two rows with same number of things (examples: coins, fruits, and candies that are equally spaced. Initially, young children knew these two rows had same number. If one row is shortened, children failed to notice that the two rows are the same. Piaget said young children did not realize these two rows are still the same number because they confused and did not see what adults see that help them to understand the task. Piaget said the ability to understand this task is " in the face of a perceptual change," and the "young child tends to be fooled by the misleading perceptual appearance" (Flavell, miller, 1993). On the Piaget's task for conservation of length, he described this task as showing young children the two pencils, two pens, or two sticks with the equal length and children knew they were the same length. If showed them by moving one stick longer than the other one, they failed to know they were the same. Then Piaget's task for conservation for liquid, he described this task as showing young children the same amount of water or juice in the two identical glasses and very fast they knew the two glasses of water or juice were the same. If poured one glass into a longer and thinner glass, children could not identify this glass had contained the same amount of water or juice as the original two identical glasses. According to Piaget's explanation, children's thinking is "perception bound" in preoperational stage and also they could not focus their attention on two aspects of the new glass, they were attentive only to one aspect which is that one glass is taller than the other two; they did not realize the taller glass had the same amount of liquid.

My subject is a four-year-old girl named Reisya Sabila. She was born in Kuningan. I have known her since she was baby because I am her aunt. In this opportunaty I have to observe her because I want to prove the knowledge of materials 'Pre-oprational stage' that have been studied, by comparing it directly through the phenomena that occur in real life children aged 2-7 years. and the children who be my focus is a child 3 years old. In determining and analyzing whether the right children at this age are able to think logically because it was past the sensory-motor stage. I use the question as gauges, and the method I used is talk openly, directly and not too formal. It is tailored to the circumstances and the child's responses. The following list of questions and answers that I got :

1.      What is this? (I gave part of body material in the situation)

: Reisya could answered almost questions I gave.

2.      What is this ? (I gave some new vocabulary to this children, such as Doll, Ballon and introducting)

: Reisya needed abit of time to memorize it and finally she got it.

3.      If you were hungry, so what do you do?

Eating

4.      If you were thirsty, What should you do?

Drink

5.      Where is the fish live?

In Pond

6.      What should we use when rainning?

Pail

7.      Where is the house of bird?

In Aviary

8.      what is your ideals?

I want to be a princess

9.       Can I put off your clothes?

No, you don’t.

-          Why?

I’ll cry. And my mom will be angry to you.

I also have two videos that showed my conversation between me and the children. I used two glasses that tea in the glasses. They knew the two glasses of tea were the same. If poured one glass into a longer and thinner glass, children could not identify this glass had contained the same amount of tea as the original two identical glasses. According to Piaget's explanation, children's thinking is "perception bound" in preoperational stage and also they could not focus their attention on two aspects of the new glass, they were attentive only to one aspect which is that one glass is taller than the other two; they did not realize the taller glass had the same amount of liquid.

Beside that, I ordered Reisya to draw a picture and she produced an art even looked little bit abstract.

She explained that the picture is a man who has two eyes and two feet.

Almost questions can be answered with the correct and appropriate by the children. However, when considered there are some questions answered, but not in accordance with the answers should be.

Based on the research conducted to Reisya, starting from giving the material part of the body to granting of new vocabulary, Reisya is able to absorb all the material quickly and it means that the age of a child is easy to master new material. Not only in the first but in a foreign language though, such as English, Arabic or the other.

In terms of the calculation, I am able to draw the conclusion that children in pre-oprational age is unable to think in both ways, children can count numbers 1-10 well in the first language (Indonesian) and the English, but when it should be sorted them of 10 -1 the child really unable to to do it. This is related to and can be evidenced from the questions that I asked you to Reisya, then I asked about her name using English, the first stage he did not know what to say, but after being given instructions and understanding if there was a question like that, she must answer by saying her name. But when she had introduced with the English,s he can not do it, even when asked about the meaning of the question "what is your name?" she did not know, just know what the answer should be given when there is a question as such.

Whereas about question on number 6 and 7 , it is enough funny for me as observer but actually that is right answer for the question. She answered that bird lives in aviary because she never known about other knowledge in the external environment, because she was rarely allowed to play out. So It does not  give additional knowledge about the life that happens in their environment. She does not  know  that the bird used to live in nests and on trees. It is also caused in her life she always see that her father put the bird in a bird cage and feed him. then formed a limited knowledge based on and influenced by life experiences that are nearby. And about pail, she often hear that her grandmother always give an instruction to her children to put pail to keep the wall affected of water splashing gutters located outside the home. The situation in psycholinguistics called underextensions. Underextension is the application of a word to a smaller set of objects than is appropriate for mature adult speech. Though less commonly observed than overextensions, careful study reveals that underextension are at least equally frequent in the language of children. The psychologist Katherine Nelson has observed that children before the age of two years form underextensions because they have trouble distinguishing the essential features of common objects from the accidental. For example, a child may call a ball ball  only when it happens to be under the sofa. The child who underextends the word ball  in this fashion must eventually realize that the word can be used with the appropriate object, regardless of its location.

Regarding the ability to memorize, already proven in this research I have done that a child is able to memorize quickly and remember well the new things she learned and she got than adults. The situation, is influenced by the ability and brains are still fresh, and also influenced by a sense of high interest to something new, coupled with motivation from others and giving reward to a child. In addition the use of instructional media and methods will make the child more attractive and longer  to concentrate and unconscious that the child is learning.

children in the pre-opratioanal have the ability to imagine well, even they often think the story contained in the book of fairy tales and movies are true stories and happening, it often affects the formation of a child's interest, although probably only lasted a few short years . It can also be seen from a question I asked about the ideals desired by reisya, when she replied that originally wanted to be a princess, such as her favorite move, Barbie. Therefore, Giving  the example, the media and the other should really paid attention well, since it has a big enough impact on the child's psychological and the mindset.

CHAPTER 3

A.    Conclusion

In this life, when we examine more deeply about the thought processes that occur in human beings. We will know the way it turns out there is diversity of thought that emerged at each level of a person's age or school level. A child certainly would not immediately be able to think logically like an adult, not because they are stupid, but because they have not been able to be in the adult stage have. The stage where children still think based on the adoption of environment is called 'Sensory Motor stage' and the stage after it is the ‘pre-oprational stage’, where the child has begun to think logically but from research it was found out the child in this stage is still adheres to the idea that sometimes exists in stage before, It is underextension. Finally, after finding that young learners have the potential and opportunity to gain new thing very well, therefore, Maximize for giving good sciences in the ages, because this stage has large effect for the formation of children, both in terms of attitude and the mindset. Children in this age very rapidly to imitate, so as much as possible then give a good example to avoid deviations in the development process of both psychological and physical.

B.     Suggestion

In this paper, the authors recognize that there are many flaws that the author did well in the description as well as the observation phase is missing. Therefore, the authors suggest to readers who want to do further studies to strengthen the material and the observation that the author has done.